GOP’s McCain, Graham, Collins used same language as Rice to describe Benghazi attack

If Susan Rice is a Liar about Benghazi, then so are McCain, Graham, Collins and McConnell

Via ABC News’ Jonathan Karl and Sunlen Miller we discover that UN Ambassador Susan Rice’s chief critics in the US Senate – John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Susan Collins – used the same “lie,” as they call it, to describe the people who killed our ambassador in Benghazi as Susan Rice did.

Even Republican Senate Leader McConnell used the same language as rice.

Both Rice and the Senators used the term “mob” to describe those who perpetrated the attack on our consulate and CIA station in Libya. None of them referred to terrorists, or Al Qaeda. Yet the Senators are now faulting Rice for not referring to Al Qaeda when the Senators themselves did not refer to Al Qaeda.

“The violence in Benghazi coincided with an attack on the United States Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, which was also swarmed by an angry mob of protestors on September 11, 2012.”

ABC notes that the resolution passed by unanimous consent. But more importantly, the resolution was created by GOP Senator, and foreign policy expert, Dick Lugar, and sponsored by GOP Senator leader Mitch McConnell, and GOP Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Susan Collins. Cosponsoring means that the resolution was passed to their office, their office reviewed the langage and agreed to it. Note the GOP Senators in red, below, who signed on to, and off on, this resolution:

Note the Republicans in light red who cosponsored this resolution.

So Mitch McConnell, John Mccain, Lindsey Graham, and Susan Collins all used the exact same language that Susan Rice did, language that they criticized her for using when they used it too.

When ABC asked McCain’s office about the contradiction, McCain’s spokesman became a bit unhinged:

Sen. McCain’s office called the comparison between the language of the resolution and Rice’s words “pathetic.”

“This is total nonsense,” McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said in a statement to ABC News.

“This was a resolution honoring Ambassador Chris Stevens and the other brave Americans who died in Benghazi, drafted by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and passed with the unanimous consent of all 100 members of the U.S. Senate one day after the attack.”

That’s McCain’s usual response to a factual inquiry, to go ballistic and hope that his histrionics divert attention from the facts at hand. What exactly is “pathetic” about pointing out that John McCain used the same “lie” as Susan Rice to describe what happened in Benghazi?

No, what’s pathetic is that John McCain told the American people a “lie” the day after we were attacked, and now wants to crucify an American public servant for saying nothing more than what McCain himself said as well.

John AravosisFollow me on Twitter: @aravosis | @americablog | @americabloggay | Facebook | Instagram | Google+ | LinkedIn. John Aravosis is the Executive Editor of AMERICAblog, which he founded in 2004. He has a joint law degree (JD) and masters in Foreign Service from Georgetown; and has worked in the US Senate, World Bank, Children's Defense Fund, the United Nations Development Programme, and as a stringer for the Economist. He is a frequent TV pundit, having appeared on the O'Reilly Factor, Hardball, World News Tonight, Nightline, AM Joy & Reliable Sources, among others. John lives in Washington, DC. John's article archive.